If you have been hiding from Planet Lotus, twitter, Facebook or the UK, you may not have noticed that this week a group of brave souls, adventurers, intellects, geeks and alcoholics are putting their feet where their mouths are and hiking 80 miles in 4 days.  All for charity.  Their efforts are impressive and you can follow their days (and nights) using this hashtag.  If you want to check in on them, see how they are dealing with the fatigue, weather, each other, or if you simply want to see some stunning pictures of scenery, take a look on twitter.  Of course, all of this as I said before is for charity.  If you are so inclined, click here to donate and keep track of the money they are raising   So far, just shy of £9000.00.

Tomorrow I’m taking a day off and heading up to meet the weary walkers when their arrive at their final destination, Inverness.  The bike is all packed up and I will do this merry jaunt starting tomorrow morning.  Sor far they have had good weather.  Of course, with me coming to meet them, that will end.

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We4IT have scheduled three German “Domino Ethical Hacking” events in May 2013

14th May – Bremen

15th May – Dusseldorf

16th May – Frankfurt

So if you want to come along and play hacking for a day, with Domino in mind, go to their site and sign up.

Modern computing does do a lot more for us.  I sometimes think about 10 years ago, and how far things have come along.  On my Mac I use notifications quite a bit, as they are subtle and don’t get in the way of my work.  Today I needed to mirror my screen so went to disable notifications to prevent small popups.  For a change I mirrored my screen to a projector first, then went to disable.  No need.

This is new to me.  I’m sure it isn’t new to many, but I felt it would be worth a quick post.  Last night I was configuring an old iPhone for a friend.  In order to activate the old phone and unlock it, I had to pop in a SIM for a moment.  So inserted SIM, let it activate/unlock and then removed the SIM and got to work syncing music etc.  I noticed that the Voicemail icon had an alert.  Low and behold there were voicemails from the other SIM, accessible even after the SIM was removed.

I’m sure my use case was unusual, but keep it in mind if you are mucking about with iPhones a lot.

Tomorrow I fly off to Madrid until Thursday morning, to present at the IBM SpringTec conference.  Among a few other things, I will be speaking for Teamstudio and demoing their Unplugged solution.  If you are an IBMr and plan on attending, be sure to say hello.  I have been neck deep in mobility, MDMs, MAMs and more for the past few months, so happy to discuss products and topics, or even answer questions if I can be of use.

Carl Tyler has created a monster.  A few months back, I bought the Swann Freestyle HD cam for using on bike/car trips.  It works very well but I wanted something more sleek to connect to my helmet for longer hauls.  Devin Olson teased me with his SportsVue 360, so Carl was good enough to order one for me and ship it to Belfast (they don’t ship outside USA).

When you get the SportsVue, it comes with a bag, two batteries, remote control and a list of mounts/attachments.  It does not come with the required SD card.   The device is self contained with the LCD on the side.  It also has a big record switch on the top, which is useful for motorbike gloves.  The camera lens is adjustable to take angles into consideration.  You want to position it flat?  Just twist the lens 90degrees.  From the LCD screen you can review and playback/edit video and pictures.   It advertises itself as waterproof and virtually indestructible.  Lifetime warranty is included.

So, in a brief period last weekend when it got over 5C (41F) I took my 796 out for a play.  Edited youtube recording (I am playing with iMovie) is below.  The device feels rugged.  Buttons are hard to press and the battery compartment is a bitch to close, but it is designed to work in just about any condition.  It does not have the functionality of the SwannCam or the venerable Hero HD devices but it does more than I need.  It secures nicely to the helmet and doesn’t look as “odd” as the other models.  I think it will be coming along with me on future rides.

I have sped up the boring parts in the video, but left some of the North East coast of Northern Ireland and the titanic quarter at normal.

Mental breadcrumb for myself here as I totally forgot this command when asked a few days ago.  Want to list administration server settings for all databases on a server?

Tell adminp show databases

Will list and output the data in the console and log.nsf.  As from the infocentre:

Displays (and records in the server’s log file) this information:

• The databases that a particular administration server updates

• The locations in the database where it updates Reader and Author fields in the databases it updates

• The databases that don’t have an administration server assigned to them

Today, for shiggles I configured a Blackberry z10 device to work with IBM Traveler 9.  We have been asked about the new BES architecture many times already as companies need to upgrade/move to BES10 server to support the new devices.

Or… use activesync with Traveler.  You start here, on the home screen and go into settings.

From here, you go to “accounts”

Choose “Email, Calendar and Contacts”

Enter your email address, the get rid of the on-screen keyboard and click on Advanced settings.

Select Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync from the list

Enter your details.  Keep the domain field blank.  Enter your username, email address and password.  Enter your traveler servlet URL (e.g. traveler.companyname.com/traveler).  It defaults to port 443.  Port 80 on Traveler is *very* unwise.  Use SSL is defaulted to on.  Click on next/finish.

Your device verifies your settings and then gives you the big thumbs up.  If you use self-certified certificates (again, something I don’t recommend these days) you will have the opportunity to accept the certificate.

You have a number of options (and a nice easy place to change the password) after setup.  Data started to come across in seconds.

As for Traveler, your z10 is listed like this:

As for wiping, you have two options.  Hard reset or traveler application and data.  Im quite impressed that Traveler can hard reset a BB device though

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Only getting to post this now.  Last week, a couple of days after returning from Auslug, I drove from Belfast to Leuven to present my Ethical Hacking for Domino day before the BLUG event.  Don’t believe me?  Enter my Swanncam freestyle (Carl Tyler may approve).

The venue, was stunning.  The town itself is lively and friendly, taken from what little I saw of it.  The hacking day (in my opinion) went very well with a full room and even two guests to add their opinions.  Mr Bill Malchisky and Andrew Pollack.  After that BLUG began.  Its hard to describe BLUG without saying it is everything I have seen in professional conferences and more, and yet Theo runs it free for delegates.  Hands down the best LUG of them all.  Best content, venue, atmosphere, sponsors, speakers, keynote.  All of it is amazing.  I was lucky enough to be asked to present my Adminblast session, aswell as a connections101.net review with Gab Davis.  At the end of day one, I MCd SpeedSponsoring and then started the drive home.  That’s where it all started to go wrong.

My plan was to leave at 7.30pm in Leuven, and make the 8am ferry from Stranraer in Scotland.  Long drive, but manageable.

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I made it just past London and the snow began.  By the time I got to Manchester I had to pull in and book into a Travel Lodge in Knutsford (abandon all hope ye who enter here).  The next morning I tried to shoot for Stranraer for the 11am ferry.  What began was 14 hours of hell.  Going back was impossible, going forward was a nightmare.  Finally making the ferry at 11pm to be told the last one was cancelled and having to spend the evening asleep in the terminal before getting home for lunch tomorrow.  Below is some shots of the Friday as it got worse.  The nighttime part is actually a road.  You just cant see it.

With all the travel recently, I am going to pull back from the LUGs for a while, focussing on MOBUG and Hacking day presentations.  If you are in Germany, stay tuned for some announcements.